Military ammunition (such as artillery shells, bombs, landmines, and underwater mines) includes, for example, a shell made of steel and a bursting charge or a chemical agent contained within the shell.
The ammunition is blasted by, for example, blasting explosives. When the detonation energy of blasting explosives is supplied to the ammunition, the shell is broken, the bursting charge is exploded, and the chemical agent is rendered harmless. The treatment method through the blasting needs no disassembling work. For this reason, the method allows for a disposal of not only well-preserved ammunition but also ammunition such as those that are difficult to disassemble due to age deterioration or deformation. When the ammunition containing chemical agents hazardous to human bodies is treated by the above-described treatment method, nearly all the chemical agents are decomposed due to ultrahigh temperature and ultrahigh pressure fields generated by the detonation of blasting explosives. An example of such blast treatment is disclosed in Patent Literature 1.
In the method disclosed in Patent Literature 1, a treatment subject is placed in a container, and ANFO explosives are disposed around the treatment subject inside the container, which is further wrapped by a sheet shaped explosive whose detonation velocity is greater than those of the ANFO explosives. Then, detonation of the sheet shaped explosive is initiated at a predetermined end thereof. Upon the initiation, the sheet shaped explosive detonates along a given direction. The detonation of the sheet shaped explosive triggers subsequent detonation of the ANFO explosives in a given direction. Detonation energy of the ANFO explosives is supplied to the treatment subject.
In this method, because the ANFO explosives are detonated almost at the same time around the treatment subject, the detonation energy of the ANFO explosives is caused to concentrate on the bursting charge within the shell. This leads to a slowdown in velocity of fragments of the shell, which are blown outward of the bursting charge by received detonation energy of the bursting charge.